View full sizeThomas Ondrey, The Plain DealerThen-Cuyahoga County Commissioner Jimmy Dimora lashes out at Republican Party Chairman Rob Frost during a 2009 meeting. Frost reflected Friday on Dimora's conviction Friday on federal racketeering and other charges: "It is a shame that this community had to live through this," Frost said in an interview, "but this verdict is going to allow us to move forward and fully realize the reforms we put in place in 2009."

Never again, they said, shouldtaxpayers fall victim to such corruption.

Consider the new style of governing that exists today at the County Administration Building, where Dimora, according to the verdict handed down by a jury of his peers, once ran a criminal enterprise.

Gone are three elected commissioners and a row of elected officeholders. In their place are a single elected executive and an 11-member County Council.

The investigation of Dimora's dealings became public in 2008 and is largely credited with compelling voters a year later to adopt this charter form of government. The vote is seen today as one ounce of good to come from Dimora's many misdeeds.

"The guys who really passed county reform were Jimmy Dimora and Frank Russo," said former Shaker Heights Mayor Judy Rawson, also acknowledging the county's disgraced ex-auditor who was one of Dimora's partners in crime.

Added former Parma Heights Mayor Martin Zanotti: "It's a sad day in Cuyahoga County to see how far the corruption had gone. But it's glad day in Cuyahoga County in that we have a new form of government in place that can help prevent this kind of corruption in the future."

Zanotti and Rawson were part of the group that wrote the charter and campaigned for its approval at the ballot box in November 2009. The following year, voters selected Ed FitzGerald to be their first county executive.

"I think the whole community owes a real debt of gratitude to the U.S. Attorney's Office and the FBI agents who investigated this case for all those years and to the jury, which I think spoke for the community," said FitzGerald, himself a former FBI agent. "This allowed us to get our local government back."

FitzGerald, initially an opponent of the charter because he thought it lacked enough independent oversight, campaigned on a promise to appoint an inspector general to investigate waste, fraud and abuse in county operations and contracts. He quickly made good on that promise by hiring Nailah Byrd, who had worked as an assistant U.S. prosecutor. To date, Byrd has looked into more than four dozen tips. Symbolically, she has Russo's old office.

Working with the council, FitzGerald has instituted a strict ethics policy and cracked down on questionable hires -- a staple of the previous regime.

"There are two things that people will come up and talk to me about when I'm traveling through other parts of the state," FitzGerald said Friday. "One is this trial. The other is the way that we've been doing things differently here. Believe me, we have gotten serious attention from other parts of the state for how we're coming back from this."

Dimora's political power in town was augmented by his role as chairman of the county's Democratic Party, which under the old system held a lock on all nonjudicial county offices. FitzGerald, former mayor of Lakewood, came from a different, younger wing of the party. And while there is unlikely to be balance in a county where the GOP is outnumbered, three Republicans sit on the council. They have worked together with their Democratic counterparts to implement guidelines that wouldn't have stood a chance in a government with Dimora and Russo at the top.

"It is a shame that this community had to live through this, but this verdict is going to allow us to move forward and fully realize the reforms we put in place in 2009," said Cuyahoga County GOP Chairman Rob Frost. "It's a terrible price for us to have had to pay -- to have had such a breach in the public trust and to have sunk so low in public leadership."

Rachel Manias, a Republican activist from Broadview Heights who became a frequent thorn in Dimora's side at commissioners' meetings, chose to celebrate Friday's verdict. After all, on the day federal agents arrested Dimora in September 2010, she drove downtown to the County Administration Building, where she stood out front wearing an FBI T-shirt and carrying a handmade sign that read "Thanks, FBI!"

For an encore, Manias called her friends and told them to meet her at the Independence steakhouse that was the scene of several of Dimora's crimes.

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